Who loves AWCs?

[afboundguy]

After a few days of testing I setup my new auto water change system on the Hydros. It was super easy as it's already programmed into the software/system. Added a low sensor after figuring out the level after taking out a gallon and the system uses the ATO as the top sensor!

Plan on doing 1 gallon a day which is the equivalent of roughly 10% weekly water changes. Should make a huge difference since I barely ever do water changes right now!

 

[FishieBusiness]

AWCs have kept me in this hobby. No matter how careful I was I still spilled water. And don't get me started with carrying 5gal. buckets of water through the house.

 

[afboundguy]

AWCs have kept me in this hobby. No matter how careful I was I still spilled water. And don't get me started with carrying 5gal. buckets of water through the house.

I am hoping it at least makes me enjoy the hobby more! Always hated doing water changes which led me to not do them which led to tank not doing as well!

 

[Kymot]

Same here, been doing AWC using DOS for 2 years now, best decision investment. Make the process so much easier. Also think the tank is much more stable with mini WC daily. I do 2 gallon a day for a 150 gal system.
One thing to watch out, one time the input stop filling water due to clogged debries so it’s constantly pulling water out but not filling back. I was abroad too, luckily i have a camera and was able tk shutdown the DOS. The joy of reefing i guess, there’s always something

 

[Kens Bees]

Every other day I have three cycles of about 3 gallons each time. Real fuzzy math comes out to about 30 gallons a week on 150 gallons total system volume. I don’t have a basement sink so there’s no way I could manage six pails of water up and down the stairs every week. I do vacuum as needed though. I also try not to store too much fresh saltwater as I did find out I was dropping alkalinity if I stored for more than a couple weeks. It hasn’t been a real issue since upgrading to the larger tank though!

This is a good calculator for figuring out effective water change volumes, Hamza’s Calculator

 

[afboundguy]

This is a good calculator for figuring out effective water change volumes, Hamza’s Calculator

That's the calculator I used to get my roughly 10% weekly equivalent!

 

[afboundguy]

Same here, been doing AWC using DOS for 2 years now, best decision investment. Make the process so much easier. Also think the tank is much more stable with mini WC daily. I do 2 gallon a day for a 150 gal system.
One thing to watch out, one time the input stop filling water due to clogged debries so it’s constantly pulling water out but not filling back. I was abroad too, luckily i have a camera and was able tk shutdown the DOS. The joy of reefing i guess, there’s always something

I have a 1/2 inch intake pipe coming from my sump and 3/8 inch coming from the SW reservoir to the sump so shouldn't be an issue for me and I have it set to only fun 1-2 minutes after normal time and will get alerted if they run past that time so I should know pretty quickly if anything like that happens!

 

[afboundguy]

Ironically it just finished its first automated/unsupervised AWC a minute ago as I have it set to start at 10pm. I'm in bed but checked the Hydros app and everything looks good level wise.

I do actually think I'll set my iV to test the system right at 10:10 pm so I'll get the most accurate salinity reading right after so I'll be alerted if it goes out of whack.